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Beatty: Third-party groups are ‘new face of the Klan’

Spartanburg Herald-Journal
By Bob Dalton
6/5/08

State Supreme Court Justice Don Beatty said Wednesday that third-party groups using him as the “poster boy” to attack candidates across South Carolina are the “new face of the Klan.”

Beatty accused organizations such as the S.C. Club for Growth, South Carolinians for Responsible Government and Conservatives in Action of distorting his record as a legislator in the 1990s to scare voters away from candidates they oppose. He said they’ve never cited any of the decisions he’s handed down in more than 12 years on the bench that would support their claims that he’s a liberal judge.

“It makes me wonder what their real reason is for attacking me,” Beatty said. “It’s because I’m an easy target, and they can use code words and my black face to appeal to voters that they might be able to enrage against legislators that supported me…These people give conservatives a bad name. I’ve heard them referred to on more than one occasion as the new face of the (Ku Klux) Klan. I’m almost about to believe that.”

Reaction from representatives of the groups ranged from outrage to surprise.

SCRG spokesman Neil Mellen said Beatty’s comment was “insulting” and “incredibly offensive.” He said SCRG has looked at Beatty’s decisions, but the “most telling indicators” of his judicial approach could be found in his approach to legislation.

Club for Growth spokesman Matt Moore said he was “appalled that someone of Justice Beatty’s stature would evoke such strong language.” He pointed out that the group endorsed Tim Scott, an African-American running for the District 117 House seat.

“Club for Growth has been at the forefront of government restructuring issues,” Moore said. “Certainly movement in the right direction would allow more African-Americans, and any other race, to have more influence in state government.”

Conservatives in Action spokesman Taft Matney said he’d been called a lot of things, but a Klansman was never one of them.

“I’m ashamed Justice Beatty is representing our state on that court after making those assertions,” Matney said. “It’s absurd, it’s abhorrent and it’s a shame.”

Matney said Beatty was neglecting his duty to uphold the rights of others to express their opinions.

“For him to take issue with South Carolinians that disagree with him and attack their rights to share their opinions is abhorrent,” he said.

Beatty said that works both ways, and that he’s allowed to express his opinions as well. He said he wasn’t attacking anyone’s rights, but he was no longer going to sit silently while his reputation was maligned.

“I’ve been quiet on this issue for quite some time,” Beatty said. “Throughout the campaign (for the Supreme Court) I allowed it to go on. But since then it’s come up time and time again, and they’re using the same arguments they used before, knowing they aren’t true.”

Beatty said a mail piece that Conservatives in Action sent out opposing Rep. Bob Walker, R-Landrum, was Exhibit A.

The flier asks voters to call Walker and “tell him to stop supporting liberals for South Carolina state judgeships.” The flier lists 12 House bills, some dating back to 1992, as evidence that Beatty “voted with the pro-abortion radicals, voted against gun owners and pushed for higher taxes and more wasteful spending” – the same charges Conservatives in Action leveled a year ago in opposing Beatty’s election to the Supreme Court.

Beatty, armed with copies of the bills, gave a point-by-point rebuttal of those claims.

For example, the Conservatives in Action piece claims that bill 4720, filed in 1992, demonstrates Beatty’s willingness to raise taxes. The bill, however, relates to the Berkeley County Board of Education, “so as to provide that vacancies must be filled for the unexpired portion of the term by special election.”

Matney said he didn’t have the bill numbers in front of him so he couldn’t address Beatty’s assertions, but questioned whether some numbers could have been transposed on the flier.

Walker said the groups have attacked Beatty based on a variety of obscure amendments in some of those bills. But he, too, questioned whether race was the issue based on conversations with constituents.

Walker said a several voters told him that in a push-poll conducted in April, they were asked how they would rate him if they knew he had voted for a black judge. He said he didn’t know who paid for the calls, and that the callers did not identify themselves.

“I don’t know who put it out there,” Walker said. “But they couldn’t attack him on his record so they had to attack him on race.”

Rep. Bill Cotty, R-Columbia, said he understands why Beatty would feel the way he does. Cotty was targeted when he ran for re-election in 2006. He is now head of the group South Carolinians for Truth – which bills itself as a “watchdog group working to set the record straight when organizations misrepresent the truth.”

“They represent the worst in politics,” Cotty said. “If we don’t take steps to get rid of these groups … then we deserve the reputation that we’re getting for malicious, scandalous and low-level politics.”

Staff writer Jason Spencer contributed to this report.

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